Gov. DeSantis calls for more rules and regulations on AI

Governor Ron DeSantis has looked upon the vast, churning ocean of artificial intelligence and issued a bold, visionary decree: someone should probably do something. According to a video segment from WTSP, the Florida governor is calling for "more rules and regulations on AI," and he believes lawmakers should lead in deciding how to manage it. That's it. That's the policy. It's the political equivalent of pointing at a fire and saying "we should probably have a fire department, ideally run by firefighters." The man has given us a sentence so vague it could be a fortune cookie. The video is from WTSP, which presumably has a weather forecast with more precision.

This is the same play we watched Josh Shapiro run just days ago, when the Pennsylvania governor demanded swift AI rules and said relying on tech companies was flat wrong. At least Shapiro had a villain. DeSantis has a verb. "Lawmakers should lead" — lead where? Lead how? Lead with what? The article does not specify a single regulation, a single bill, a single agency, or a single timeline. It is a call to action in the same way a shrug is a call to arms.

Meanwhile, the actual frontier labs are shipping models faster than Florida can redraw a congressional map. The regulatory gap doesn't close because a governor says words to a local news camera. We now have Warner saying he's not a doomer, Shapiro saying tech companies are flat wrong, and DeSantis saying lawmakers should lead — a beautiful trifecta of concerned noises that collectively amount to "please, someone else, do something, eventually." The AI safety debate has become a parade of elected officials discovering that vague concern is the only bipartisan consensus left. Cheers to leadership.